Key local figure
John Berry (1798–1870), born near Hillsborough, was a self-taught builder-architect whose Orange County work includes the Masonic Hall, St. Matthew's Episcopal Church and the 1844-45 courthouse, and he served several terms in the state Senate. His will left at least 1,238 acres and 42 enslaved people to his widow and children.
Source: NCpedia: Berry, John
1798–1870 as the Library of Congress records it · Library of Congress authority record ↗
10 indexed works are connected with this person, and the index includes 9 works by John Berry.
Works in the index that concern this person directly, or were written by them. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it; background reading with wider context sits further down.
Historic American Buildings Survey documentation of the Berry Brick House at 208 West Queen Street, Hillsborough, compiled after 1933: two photographs, five data pages and a caption page. Names tied to the house include John and Rhoda Berry, Samuel Hancock and the Porter and McLarty families. Topics include brick construction, bricklaying, domestic life and restoration.
Eagle Lodge at 142 West King Street, Hillsborough, a brick Masonic building, in Historic American Buildings Survey documentation compiled after 1933: three photographs, five data pages and a caption page. Names connected with it include Edmund Fanning, William Nichols, John Berry, Samuel Hancock and members of the Lytle family. Topics include fraternal organizations and the building's use as an assembly and lecture hall.
Historic American Buildings Survey documentation, compiled after 1933, of the brick Hillsborough Presbyterian Church at Churton and West Tryon Streets: three photographs, four data pages and a caption page. Names tied to the church's story include William Hooper, Archibald Murphy, William A. Graham, Frederick Nash, William J. Bingham and Edmund Strudwick, and its history touches on the Revolutionary War and slavery.
Hillsborough's Orange County Courthouse, at King and Churton Streets, documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey after 1933 in 8 photographs, 21 measured drawings, 3 data pages and a caption page. Names attached include the builder John Berry and photographer Jack E. Boucher.
Sans Souci, a wooden town house on East Corbin Street (once North Street) in Hillsborough, recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey after 1933 in four photographs, four data pages and a caption page. Topics include domestic life, medicine and business, with Samuel T. Latta, William Cain and John Berry among the names connected to it.
St. Matthew's Episcopal Church on St. Mary's Road in Hillsborough, documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey after 1933: five photographs, three data pages and a caption page. Names linked to the brick church include John Berry, Thomas Ruffin, Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft, Moses Ashley Curtis, Tiffany and Company and the Cameron, Hill and Graham families.
Eva Ingersoll Gatling's article on John Berry (1798 to 1870), the Hillsborough builder and architect, detached from the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, volume 10, number 1, pages 18 to 22, with illustrations. It concerns the history of North Carolina architecture and the historic buildings of Hillsborough. Published by the society in Philadelphia in 1951.
The printed program for a ceremony held on the evening of 11 September 1964 at the new courthouse in Hillsborough, where the Hillsborough Historical Society and Eagle Lodge No. 19 unveiled a plaque honoring John Berry, the builder, architect and legislator who lived from 1798 to 1870. One folded sheet of four pages with a portrait.
Testimony gathered in an 1849 contested election case from Orange County, summarizing the evidence about the individual voters whose eligibility the committee could not agree on. John Berry and Hugh Waddell were the candidates in the case before the North Carolina Senate committee on privileges and elections. Eight pages, useful to anyone studying who could vote in the county and on what terms.
James C. Turrentine, for many years sheriff of Orange County, addressed his fellow citizens in this 1844 broadside, answering John Berry's charge that he had acted improperly in casting the deciding vote for Berry's opponent at a recent election. Thirty by nineteen centimeters, signed at the end.
Papers of John Berry (1798-1870), the Hillsborough architect, described by the Z. Smith Reynolds Library Special Collections and Archives at Wake Forest University in an entry dated May 2, 2014. Topics include North Carolina architects, the buildings and history of Hillsborough, and the buildings of Wake Forest College.
Research papers of Mary Claire Engstrom, 1906 to 1997, dated 1963 to 1984 and filling 13.75 linear feet with roughly ten thousand items, part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 4684. Her subjects were Hillsborough's historic buildings and districts, John Berry, Mr. and Mrs. Burwell's Female School, county cemeteries, Quakers, and local history. Correspondence with other genealogists belongs to the group.
Research materials on John Berry, 1798 to 1870, gathered around 1951 by Eva Ingersoll Gatling, 1912 to 2000, thirteen items in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 517.100. The materials document Berry as a North Carolina architect, following his buildings at Hillsborough, Oxford and Salisbury and on the campuses of the University of North Carolina and Wake Forest.
The Orange County courthouse in Hillsborough with its bell tower, a street lamp and overhead wires, and a man leaning on a pole at right. Published about 1905 to 1915 for the W. A. Hayes Drug Store and printed in Germany for A. C. Bosselman. The card credits King George III with giving the town its tower clock in 1769.
Star pattern quilt of 1861, pieced from red, green and yellow calico and stitched by hand, with a white backing quilted in floral designs. Elizabeth Vincent Berry, wife of the Hillsborough architect and builder John Berry, made it.
Senate committee reports from 1849 on the contested election for Orange County's seat in the 37th Senatorial District of North Carolina, fought between Hugh Waddell (1799-1878) and John Berry (1798-1870). The committee split, and the pamphlet prints both parts' reports, the Senate resolutions and the committee's proceedings. Printed in Raleigh by S. Gales, 32 pages.
Dated events connected with this person: sixteen of 31, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 31 dated events in the chronology →
The one-and-a-half-story Federal house, the oldest surviving brick dwelling in the original town, was built about 1805 for Mrs. Rhody Berry. Tradition credits her son John Berry, but he was seven that year, and the 2014 nomination suggests neighbor Samuel Hancock, the brickmason who later became his partner.
People: Samuel Hancock
Subject: Berry Brick House
In July 1823 commissioners James S. Smith, Thomas Clancy and J. P. Sneed advertised in the Hillsborough Recorder for proposals to build a brick Masonic Hall in the town. The cornerstone was laid on November 23, 1823, for the Greek Revival hall designed by William Nichols and built by local brickmasons John Berry and Samuel Hancock.
People: John Berry · William Nichols · Samuel Hancock
Subject: Eagle Lodge
St. Matthew's, an early Gothic Revival church of Flemish-bond brick, was built in 1825-1826 by the local masons John Berry and Samuel Hancock to a design by William Nichols, who set its size at 35 by 45 feet. It replaced an earlier church at Churton and West Tryon streets that had burned in 1793.
People: William Nichols · Samuel Hancock
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
Paul Cameron built the town house he named Burnside on South Cameron Street, on the stone foundation of his father-in-law Thomas Ruffin's earlier house. Enslaved workers from Cameron's Fairntosh plantation built it under his master carpenter Jack, and John Berry laid the brick.
People: John Berry · Thomas Ruffin
Subject: Burnside
Builder John Berry added at least one two-story rear ell, with a Federal-style stair typical of his work, to the 1820s house that Peter Brown Ruffin owned in the 1840s. The house's first owner is unknown.
County magistrates ordered a new Hillsborough courthouse in early 1844 and set aside $6,000, and its cornerstone was set to be laid with Masonic ceremonies on September 7, 1844. John Berry designed and built the Greek Revival temple-form building, which was standing by May 1845; the town clock went into its cupola in July 1846.
Burwell resigned his pulpit and bought the two lots from the church for $800 and back pay. The builder John Berry added a central hall and two rooms and turned the house to face Churton Street. A deed of trust of July 16, 1850 shows Burwell still owing Berry $2,500 and the church trustees $800, secured on the lots and on enslaved members of the household.
Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events
People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry
Subject: Burwell School · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
The west wing of the bungalow at 114 West Orange Street is reputed to be the old Burwell schoolroom, moved there in 1850 while John Berry was renovating the Burwell School. The house around it dates from 1922.
Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events
People: John Berry
Subject: Burwell School
Professor Benjamin Hedrick's house at 610 East Rosemary Street, known for its octagonal room, was ready by 1855 and the Hedricks moved in; Preservation Chapel Hill credits the Hillsborough builder John Berry and Hedrick's own design, and Little says he bought an older farmhouse from the university and added the eight-sided room. Horace Williams later owned it, and Preservation Chapel Hill now has its offices there.
People: John Berry
Subject: Horace Williams House
After inheriting Sans Souci from Dr. William Cain in 1857, Dr. Pride Jones has builder John Berry renovate the house, adding the rear dining room and stair, the full-width front porch and the one-story wings.
People: Pride Jones
Subject: Sans Souci
The academy's neo-Gothic commandant's house, with turrets and crenellations along the roofline, was far enough along to be occupied by March 1859, though interior work may have continued for years.
People: John Berry
Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy
On May 13, 1861, after Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops, Orange County voters again chose William A. Graham and John Berry as delegates to the state convention, over Paul C. Cameron and Henry K. Nash. The Recorder printed the precinct returns and noted the convention would meet in Raleigh on May 20.
Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events
People: John Berry
The brick church that Capt. John Berry built on the Tryon Street lot bought in 1859 was dedicated by William Barringer, presiding elder of the Raleigh District. The first sermon in it was preached by Jesse A. Cunninggim.
People: John Berry
Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church
With its building money lost in the war, the congregation appears to have moved into the basement of the new Wake Street church around 1864 and met there for some years. The builder John Berry finished the building later.
People: John Berry
Elected to the state Senate in 1865, Graham could not take that seat without a pardon. The legislature then chose him for the U.S. Senate, and he was turned away with the rest of the state's delegation. His pardon arrived in 1867.
People: John Berry
A bronze plaque naming John Berry a contributor to the tradition of American architecture was fixed to the 1845 courthouse he built in Hillsborough.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 15 with a known location.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.
The index lists works with an Orange County connection. To find everything else about John Berry, search these catalogs.
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